THE SALSIFY SMARTER MERCHANDISING BLOG

3 Simple Rules to Take Control of Your Hardlines Product Data

Consumers need to find the correct product specs for your full catalog no matter where they shop. Distributors and retailers want a reliable source of your product information delivered in a format specific to each of their needs. Salsify is a strategic partner for several leading product manufacturers including Hansgrohe, HARMAN, Honeywell and Bosch.

Last week, Salsify’s Ben Holcombe, Director of Enterprise Sales and Lindsay Majno, Customer Success Manager shared the best practices from these leading hardlines companies to help you improve getting your products in market across multiple retailers. Listen to the 20-minute webinar on-demand now.

Rule 1: Know your retailers’ requirements

Understanding specific requirements from third-party retailers, like Amazon and Home Depot, and big distribution houses like Grainger is key to better merchandising. Salsify can help you provide the right product attributes for the right channels, based on the audience you are trying to reach.

Rule 2: Use workflows to organize your company’s digital attributes

Unique attributes are required for all your different types of products. As a product marketer or a sales team member, trying to track down those unique specs can be nightmarish and take hours of time. With Salsify, customers that use UNSPSC workflows are able to build tasks into the platform. From the day a product is added into Salsify with the UNSPSC code identified, the product managers are notified, in-app, of the additional attributes needed for the products that they are creating. When a new product is introduced, the system emails the relevant product managers to alert them of this task.

Rule 3: Publish the most up-to-date product information with confidence

One of the biggest challenges of working with the Home Depot, Amazon, and a lot of other retailers, is aligning your products with their thousands of categories. We have taken the quick sheets in the IDM portal and consolidated them into one channel within Salsify, so pricing, fulfillment details, safety information, images, and attributes all syndicate correctly.

Q: “If Salsify doesn’t yet work with a client that we work with is Salsify able to establish a new connection for us to begin working with them?”

A: Yes, one of the initial steps we take for all new customers is learning their priority channel partners and discussing how content is delivered today. Often we have other customers who are already sending content to those partners. When that’s not the case, our team builds out a channel so you can deliver ready product content. Additionally, we often advocate for retailers to provide an open API so we can connect our brands directly.

Q: “If attributes change can Salsify automate the distribution of the changes to the appropriate channels?”

A: Yes, content refresh schedules are used to provide new, updated data to all of your channel partners as frequently as needed. When an attribute is changed in Salsify, simply clicking ‘publish to channel’ will reflect the change in the data feeds being sent. Salsify will show you what changes have been made upon saving. Many customers set up permission levels in Salsify so changes can be appropriately approved before going live through your company’s proper workflows.